Oleg Kouzbit, Online News Managing Editor

Novosibirsk scientists are pushing the limits of FOCL-based data transmission. At an Institute of Automation and Electrometry lab, a new long-distance FOCL system is being developed based on a revolutionary super-long distributed laser—a recent Siberian invention that the researchers believe will dramatically reduce current costs of data transmission, prevent loss of data or signal attenuation, and triple or even quadruple the span of stable communications without any additional amplifiers. The innovation that drew upon international scientific collaboration may cause a quantum leap—and a quantum price reduction—in a wide spectrum of telecom technologies from telephony to television and Internet capabilities.

The Institute of Automation and Electrometry (IAE)’s customer under the long-distance FOCL contract is government-controlled Rostelecom, a deep-pocket mover and shaker in Russia’s growing telecom market with an estimated 100 million client base across this country.

The deal’s value has yet to be announced. In-situ testing on real-life telecom lines may start this coming summer, according to IAE deputy director Sergei Babin.

The IAE research team believes being able to transmit undistorted and fully retained data for 300 and more kilometers instead of today’s 70-100km and wasting no money on amplifiers will spectacularly cut telecoms’ costs of building and maintaining communications lines and will eventually turn Russia’s telecom segment into a huge buyers market.

Seeking out laser limits

The Institute of Automation and Electrometry is part of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences headquartered in Novosibirsk’s famous ‘think-tank area,’ Akademgorodok.

In late 2011 it reportedly completed lab tests of its new super-long laser using 300km long fiber optics coils, making major headway from what had started out the year before as joint Russo-British research for a fiber laser’s possible range limits.

IAE had at that point pooled efforts with Prof. Sergei Turitsyn, an ethnic Russian from Birmingham’s Aston University, to ultimately discover that with the Siberian technology laser generation was steady for at least 300km. This new knowledge (reportedly acclaimed by the Optics and Photonics News magazine as “discovery of the year”) helped the Novosibirsk scientists conduct the testing and find out that extending laser capacity beyond the observed length was possible and within reach.

Next month IAE hopes to determine an achievable range limit and make progress in its cutting-edge long-distance FOCL.

No more expensive amplifiers!

Today’s fiber lasers consist of LEDs or laser diodes acting as an excitation module, an active light guide (or optical fiber proper), and a cavity inside the guide that amplifies a signal.

Using optical fiber to transmit laser emission has been known since 1961; however, considerable emission attenuation has been a plague of all systems designed ever since. On current FOCLs, each 70-100km line section requires a signal amplifier, which makes FOCL maintenance very expensive.

The Novosibirsk researchers claim their new super-long distributed fiber laser technology eliminates the attenuation bane and renders additional amplifiers redundant by turning an entire FOCL into a resonating cavity that generates signal-amplifying emission.

How it works

According to Mr. Babin, IAE’s innovation enables lasting narrow-spectrum signal generation—an achievement “beyond reach of any other research team elsewhere in the world.”

Unlike other labs that also work to take extra signal amplifiers out of the equation and have tried to push the range of fiber optics data transmission by externally applying stimulated scattering of a photon beam, the Novosibirsk technique is said to amplify the signal by generating additional photon beams inside the FOCL rather than outside it.

The new beams are evenly distributed along the length of a fiber; therefore “the signal doesn’t jump or die out but rather intensifies steadily and uniformly to a certain level that offsets prior loss,” Mr. Babin explained.

With such uniformity no extra noise pulses are generated and no data is distorted or lost, he added.

A buyers market ahead?

With its 500,000+ kilometer long FOCL system Russia is already one of the world’s largest markets in this segment. However, growth is fundamentally contained by the high cost of FOCL maintenance.

Some sector analysts feel with the unconventional Novosibirsk technology the high-end Russian telecom market is in for a major downward pricing spiral.